Service providers may configure networks to deliver network traffic over a path having a bandwidth. Service providers may want to configure networks to efficiently use the available bandwidth to meet the needs of their subscribers. For example, a subscriber may send different types, or classes, of traffic across a network, such as voice traffic, video traffic and/or data traffic. The subscriber may require that various classes of traffic be handled differently. In the above example, voice traffic may be prone to distortion when delayed between a sending device and a receiving device. In contrast, data traffic may be relatively insensitive to delay. As a result, a subscriber may wish to have voice traffic treated with a higher priority as compared to data traffic.
Service providers may configure networks to treat classes of traffic according to differing delivery requirements to facilitate efficient utilization of bandwidth. For example, service providers may configure networks to assign a best effort or a lower priority to data traffic and a higher priority to time-sensitive traffic, such as voice and/or video traffic.
Service providers may configure network devices to facilitate efficient traffic management in networks. For example, a network device may be configured to implement a scheduler to schedule the forwarding of traffic via logical interfaces according to the traffic's associated priority. A logical interface may be, for example, a virtual circuit (VC). The service provider may allocate bandwidth on the logical interface based on an anticipated volume for each class of traffic, such as, for example, voice, video, and/or data classes. A scheduler may try to shape traffic so as to ensure that no traffic class exceeds its portion of the overall bandwidth for the VC. This type of traffic shaping may cause the allocated bandwidth to be underutilized if a class of traffic, such as voice, is operating below its allocated threshold.